It was in October last year that Suryakant Sawhney, vocalist of seminal indie act Peter Cat Recording Co, announced that he was about to launch his next album as Lifafa, his solo avatar. Fans waited with bated breath. But then they kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. It was almost as if the album was the promise of a new dawn that would never arrive. But the sun finally rose, so to speak, on May 21 when Sawhney dropped Superpower 2020 out of the blue with no prior intimation.

“Life got in the way,” the Delhi-based musician tells us about the delay, adding, “My wife and I shifted houses and there were many things going on from the personal point of view.” Yet, the songs kept marinating in his ears because, as Sawhney explains, “It’s impossible for them to stop ringing; you are liberated only after the music leaves.”